The paper discusses various accommodations that ought to be made in the substantive criminal law to account for the challenges that individual emergencies may pose to the legitimacy of its rule. I address specific puzzles related to emergency-related reason/fact-relative justifications, evidence-relative justifications, and excuses. The paper also includes a discussion of the status of morality in the face of individual emergencies, as well as of the rule and authority of criminal law. I conclude by differentiating the challenges posed by individual and more generalised emergencies.